Learning to be patient with our bodies’ natural cleansing abilities and building strength so that we could detoxify without risk of re-absorbing those toxins is one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn.

Our bodies go through natural phases of cleansing and re-building. We need the rebuilding phase to strengthen our detoxification systems.

It’s spring now (finally) for most of us. And, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine — spring is the season for cleansing. Your liver has more functions than we can count, and plays a major role in your ability to cleanse yourself of toxins. Your liver must filter every single food, chemical, and even emotion that passes through you.

I thought I’d share this interview that my husband Doug did for Body Ecology last year. In it, he talks about the delicate balance we needed to create in order to detoxify our son. If you need help or have questions about detoxifying your child on the spectrum, don’t hesitate to ask. We are here. And, now may be the perfect time for you to start,

Q: It’s liver cleansing season. Doug, can you tell us how important detoxification was to your family during Dougie’s recovery and if you have changed his diet or added detoxification techniques during this time of year to help him cleanse more?

A: Well, it was clear to me very early on that my son, Dougie was filled with poisons. Many parents have different stories. But our son’s health gradually declined as a result of countless ear infections, throat infections, colds, fevers — ­ you name it. At this point, of course, he was also regressing developmentally, but I didn’t link the two right away. At first, we went the traditionally accepted route and sought medical doctors and medicines to tackle his infections. But, Dougie kept getting sicker. Once he had the croup he kept getting it over and over again. It seemed that he never healed from one infection when another one popped up.

There was a part of me that always understood that there was this deeply rooted source of sickness inside of Dougie, and that maybe if we could conquer that we could get our little boy back. I wasn’t too familiar with the terms of detoxification yet.

At a certain point, the medicine just became too much. My wife, Gina and Dougie were both sick for at least six months without relief from coughs, fatigue digestive pain, and pneumonia. Gina’s health and the fact that she could express her feelings helped us gauge what was going on with Dougie a little easier. Once, we sat in the E.R. for Gina because we were certain that she had mono. They tested her. She had it. But, the doctor just told her to go home and rest. We were like, “What? Don’t you have a medicine for this?” And the ER doctor looked my wife in the eyes and said, “Honey you have been on way too many medications. They are not going to work for you anymore.” We were actually angry with him. We were just taught that there was a pill to solve any ailment. Gina couldn’t rest. She had to care for a sick baby all of the time. And they both kept getting sicker.

Soon after, we visited a new pediatrician for Dougie with the hopes of finding an answer to his chronic illness. We left with cough medicine, electrolyte enhancer, and another prescription for antibiotics. But we also left with a sense of hopelessness.

As Dougie screamed on the pediatrician’s table that day, with his eyes and nose full of mucous and his cough brutal, ­the doctor spent no more than ten minutes with him before just writing out a prescription and stating that we should give him a flu shot that same day.

And you know what? We would’ve done it. We always trusted doctors up until this point. But, Gina remembered her mom telling her that children should never be vaccinated when sick. We wondered if maybe the vaccine could cure his illness. We had no idea what vaccines really did. We just chose to listen to my mother-in-law’s advice for once. At the time we declined the flu shot, we had no idea of our rights to even do so. Gina just said that we would bring Dougie back for the vaccine when his infections were cleared. Thankfully we never did.

So, when my wife was boiling up the garlic tea to help Dougie push out his sickness, I completely understood that we needed to get rid of the infections that were causing him pain. I understood that the medications were somehow suppressing his natural ability to heal. After all, I could get sick with a cold and get well in two days. But, we chose the best doctors for Dougie, with the feeling that giving our son lots of medicines when he was ill, was giving him so much more than our parents could give us. He was vaccinated 24 times by the age of 18 months. We really thought we were doing the best for him.

We got letters in the mail from the mayor of our city reminding us when to vaccinate. We posted it on our fridge. We were new parents and we were proud to be able to provide such outstanding care for Dougie.

I wanted him to be healthy. My wife and I would do anything in our power to help relieve his pain.

We began detoxing him right away. Even before we found Body Ecology. Even before we completely took him off the prescription medicines, over-the- counter fever reducers and French fries, Gina was giving him Epsom salt baths and trying to get him to drink garlic and ginger tea, which were things she learned about through her research.

Still, we were both afraid of what might happen to Dougie if we removed the antibiotics. We knew that pneumonia could be deadly. Gina and her mom would hold Dougie down to make sure he got his correct dosage. Gina would be on the phone with the doctor’s office asking for advice for how to get the medicine into him. I remember her asking the nurse one day, “When can I stop giving him these medicines, they make him so unhappy?” Our doctors and nurses felt for us. But they did not have answers that helped us. Poor Dougie got to a point where he didn¹t trust us at all. He would seal his mouth shut so tight that if we wanted to feed him anything, he resisted.

I grew impatient with my wife when her attempts at natural healing didn’t seem to work. But, looking back I have to admit that although we were getting him to drink homemade detox teas, we kept him on medications from the doctor for quite some time and we didn’t really change his diet.

I mention all of these details because it took this much time and this much accumulation of toxicity — infections, medications, vaccinations and the negative stress to create the toxic build up inside Dougie. It took so much time for me to fully grasp his toxic load. Over time, we found out that he has tremendously high levels of cadmium, antimony, mercury and other heavy metals.

We saw his health improve quickly after we began the Body Ecology Diet with Dougie.

I understand now that he couldn¹t properly detoxify because he was still being poisoned. Even my stress over trying to get the medications into him and worrying about his health added to his toxic load. Our family home energy was thick with stress.

Little by little we began to recover his physical health by adding fermented foods like coconut kefir and cultured green salsa. We also gradually got rid of gluten, casein, sugar, and processed foods. I listened to Donna Gates’ Detoxification series recently, and learned that the body cannot detoxify if it has no energy. Dougie was completely depleted of energy when we first began Body Ecology.

But in very little time, he began coming back to us. Once the coughs and infections were under control, ­ boy did we see detox! I mean he released so much junk in his stool. As a parent, it was very sad to see that all of these things were stored inside my baby’s body.

But, we had to go slowly. His body was still very fragile. Often times I would come home from work and Dougie would be frantic and tantrumming. We didn’t have all the answers as to why he was acting in such extreme behaviors. We doubted the diet at times.

However, Gina was determined that this diet would work, and until she had a
really great grasp on how to do it effectively for Dougie , we did not practice any other forms of detox for him. Of course, we always felt like we could be doing more, but in the end, I think slow and steady progress is what got us this far.

After about a year of Doing Body Ecology, Gina got up the courage to do home enemas on herself and Dougie to help further detox. I was against this at first. It sounded really strange. But, when Dougie began asking for enemas, I knew they were doing something great for him.

In fact, although Dougie was non-verbal for a long time, when he was receiving an enema, he would often speak full and complete sentences. This was a sign to us that the build-up of toxins had something to do with his lack in verbal language. Gina added home enemas, skin brushing castor oil packs, sound and movement therapy, massage, Reiki and raw foods to our detox plan back in April of 2007 and Dougie’s development soared.

We’ve never gone back. These detox tools remain a part of our life. We rotate them in and out. We are at a point where we don¹t do enemas unless Dougie asks for them. Because, we know he will ask if he needs them. I think it’s important also to understand that although most of us are detoxing daily, our kids with toxic overload seem to be very fragile. They cannot handle very deep cleanses. So you always have to be building them up, energizing them, nourishing them, and making digestion easy so that they don¹t have extra stuff to release.

During the season of liver detox, Gina likes to add in a special fermented beet juice and cultured beet cracker made with turmeric and artichoke among other things. Dougie loves these and they definitely help him cleanse.In fact, because of my wife, my son has learned more about his body than most adults I know. He will tell us when something is good for his tummy or his brain.

We continue to see him detoxify from the many poisons that were built up inside of him. But, the process is much easier now that we have a real handle on how detoxification works naturally in the body.

Doug recently left his job and moved his family across the country in order to spend more valuable time with his son, Dougie. His wife, Gina runs a one-year autism recovery program for families who want to use Body Ecology, raw foods, energetic and sensory healing to overcome the toxicities related to the autism diagnosis.